Recruitment Marketing Strategies for Small Business

By Kelly Barcelos

Today’s job seekers are in the driver’s seat. They’re no longer willing to just throw their resumes in the wind and hope for the best.

In the past, recruiters and candidates essentially met at the job interview. Career sites and job boards were the primary source of ways to learn about potential opportunities. The process of recruitment is the key to bridging the gap between recruiters and candidates.

Candidates now have the power of a social world on their side. They can conduct endless research to fully understand the company’s culture and its reputation before making the first contact. And they are way more selective about which organizations they are willing to work for.

For candidates, looking for a job is a lot like making a purchase. The research happens on a regular basis, over a long period of time before they take any action. What’s more? Candidates are often your customers. How you treat job seekers can affect customer relationships and your overall reputation in the market. This means you must compete for the best talent, while simultaneously enriching the job seeker experience.

Recruiting has become more of a marketing process. Today’s recruiters need to shift their focus and evolve their strategies to more of a marketing process. You need to meet your candidates where they are available, engaging them early on and often, to nurture and build long-lasting relationships. In fact, the most sophisticated recruiters engage with potential job seekers before the position even opens. And they’re gaining attention of people who may be happily employed somewhere else.

Learn What Makes Your Candidate Tick

Today’s job seekers demand more than just a salary hike when they make a switch to your company. With mind-numbing long work hours and repetitive tasks, job seekers may easily lose interest or shift their focus on getting a new job. And it’s important for you to be a step ahead of job seekers when enticing them with a new offer. The tips below will help both you hire and retain high-quality talent.

Training and Professional Development

Start with implementing a weekly training session, send a group of employees to a conference, or design a mentoring program.

Value Employees’ Opinions

Employees deserve to feel respected and valued. So make them feel empowered and involved when brainstorming on new strategies.

Recognition of Personal Accomplishments and Milestones

When you acknowledge the efforts of your employees, they feel appreciated and valued for their efficient contributions to your company.

A Fun Environment

A great way to keep your employees engaged is through consciously creating a positive and fun environment for everyone. The little fun and entertainment could be in the form of birthday celebrations, yearly trips or the celebration of a few major festivals that occur throughout the year.

Offer Some Flexibility

It’s important for you to understand that your employees may not be physically present at all times. And a simple solution is to allow them some flexibility. Allow your employees to work from home twice a month and flexible work hours when personal work comes up.

Develop Candidate Personas

The crux of the matter is to ensure you’re targeting the right candidates. A great way to stay on track is to generate candidate personas to ensure your job titles, descriptions, and posts appeal to candidates that make the perfect fit to your firm. Here’s how you can go about it:

Sieve Through

Candidate personas fine tune your search to ensure you are tapping on the right talent. They’re a lot more than just a demographics sketch and instead offer a comprehensive evaluation of a candidate’s interests, their goals, triumphs, challenges, hobbies, and other personal information that help in making the right judgment as a recruiter.

Assemble Information

Have a little chat with your competitors. Find out their candidate career choices, background, and experiences. Analyze your hiring data and look for top performers to tap on them.

Record Your Research

Once you have gathered the required data for each job title, your personas will finally be created. Bring your persona to life with a name so that your profile is ready to be read.

4 Recruitment Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

1. Branding

Narrate an Employer Brand Journey —What sets large companies apart from the small ones is simply how strong the brand is. But it doesn’t mean that your company won’t outshine the rest of them. Being a small company leaves you with some advantages over larger companies. So how exactly do you strengthen your employer brand?

Write articles and publish them on popular websites for more visibility
Submit your story to authoritative websites like Entrepreneur
Speak at seminars, business events, and local industries

Sell Your Company’s Unique Benefits —Small businesses always have an edge over larger companies in terms of the work culture they constantly strive to achieve and maintain. And fortunately, providing the right culture doesn’t break the bank. While big companies would spoil you for choice with hosting events at fancy restaurants and bars, small businesses offer opportunities for growth and flexible schedules.

Aim at Recruiting Efforts —When you design job descriptions, figure out the type of people you want to attract. Think about the types of candidates who would make the right fit for your company. Make sure your candidate profile includes a brief idea about the skills required, experience, education, and personality traits that best align with your company’s requirements.

2. Inbound/Outbound Techniques

Outbound marketing techniques are commonly known as interruptive marketing. They send a strong and clear message to your target audience through job postings, advertisements, and PPC campaigns.

Inbound techniques, on the other hand, are also an important part of your recruitment marketing investment. It utilizes mainly SEO, blogging, social media, email along with other strategies to effectively attract the right candidates to your website. Inbound techniques should also aim at developing at an authentic candidate pipeline through powerful content, landing pages, and effective calls to action.

3. Candidate Fostering

Holding a person’s attention and encouraging them to take action is the key. Candidate fostering requires regular follow-ups with candidates to keep them engaged. Here are the few ways you can do so:

Job AlertsSign-up forms are a great way to notify potential candidates about new job openings. —

Emails —Targeted messages are sent to candidates during the process of recruitment to let them know what to expect next. Recruiters should also respond to candidates within a reasonable time frame after contacting them.

Secondary Calls to Action —Many candidates may not respond at first instance. They might utilize this time to find out what benefits your organization offers, work culture, your mission and other basic information. Secondary calls to action keep candidates engaged by providing them the information they’re looking for.

Social Media Engagement —Social media is a great market for recruiters to tap on. Regular job postings and employee highlights give you a space to promote your brand message. Using a hashtag will increase your visibility and anchor your recruitment efforts.

4. Passive Candidate Recruitment

Inbound marketing is also an important strategy to gain the attention of passive candidates. They may not be actively looking out for a job but are always open to new job offers. A massive 80% of positions are filled through networking and surprisingly, they’re all passive candidates.

4 Tools Required

1. Candidate Process

Your candidate process is your first opportunity to interact with candidates, so try to make them feel valued. Make sure your interactions reflect the culture of your company:

Continuous Branding
Personalized Emails
Timely Follow-up
Frequent Communication
Intentional Interviews
Strategic Onboarding

2. Recruitment Technology

Dip your digital toe into a recruitment process to help you sort resumes, manage applications, engage through emails, and create personalized candidate experiences. With plenty of recruiting technology solutions to choose from, ensure you look for one that aligns with your hiring culture.

3. Websites/Career Pages

While job postings are a necessity, try to also market your company to candidates. Implement secondary calls to action by providing newsletter and job alerts. They leave passive candidates with an opportunity to still apply for positions.

4. Job Postings

Utilize platforms like LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions and Facebook’s new job capabilities. Keep your job postings concise and filter your job requirements to attract candidates who really require the job.

For more recruiting tips, read the posts below: